BOMBSHELL: Mifsud prepared to testify to setup operation

Muellers team alleges that Mifsud is the person who fed a story in spring 2016 to Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos about Moscow possessing purloined emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was the earliest known contact in the now-debunked collusion narrative and the seminal event that the FBI says prompted it on July 31, 2016, to open its probe into the Trump campaign.[...]Mifsud was a longtime cooperator of western intel who was asked specifically by his contacts at Link University in Rome and the London Center of International Law Practice (LCILP)  two academic groups with ties to Western diplomacy and intelligence  to meet with Papadopoulos at a dinner in Rome in mid-March 2016, Roh told me.[...]A few days after the March dinner, Roh added, Mifsud received instructions from Link superiors to put Papadopoulos in contact with Russians, including a think tank figure named Ivan Timofeev and a woman he was instructed to identify to Papadopoulos as Vladimir Putins niece.

Mifsud knew the woman was not the Russian presidents niece but, rather, a student who was involved with both the Link and LCILP campuses, and the professor believed there was an effort underway to determine whether Papadopoulos was an agent provocateur seeking foreign contacts, Roh said.

So here's the deal. Mifsud -- a man with extensive ties to Western intelligence agencies and politicians with documented photographic evidence -- says he was tasked with meeting Papadopoulos and feeling him information on Russian dirt about Hillary. Mifsud then says he was tasked with introducing Papadopoulos to Russians. Again, tasked. Later, Papadopoulos talks with Downer and mentions Russian dirt on Hillary. (No emails mentioned either time -- all three parties agree on this).

It seems certain now that this whole operation was a setup designed to give the FBI a deniable reason to get an investigation opened into the Trump campaign. And the deception continued past the election, past the inauguration, all the way into the Mueller report, which describes Mifsud as a Russian agent.

So who tasked Mifsud with setting up Papadopoulos? Let's follow that up the chain.

All 8 Russia-Trump contacts in Mueller report were entrapment schemes

One simple fact emergesof the eight cases or incidents of alleged Trump Campaign interaction with the Russians investigated by the Mueller team, the proposals to interact with the Russian Government or Putin originated with FBI informants, MI-6 assets or people paid by Fusion GPS, not Trump or his people. There is not a single instance where Donald Trump or any member of his campaign team initiated contact with the Russians for the purpose of gaining derogatory information on Hillary or obtaining support to boost the Trump campaign. Not one.

Simply put, Trump and his campaign were the target of an elaborate, wide ranging covert action designed to entrap him and members of his team as an agent of Russia.

Dossier based on posts from "random individuals" on CNN website

The dossier that launched several investigations into Donald Trump and his presidential campaign was based, in part, on posts from "random individuals" from a CNN website that allows the public to publish unverified information.

Christopher Steele made the admission in a deposition given in connection with a lawsuit against the dossier. The judge released portions of the deposition this week.

CNN is so tightly connected to the Clintons that it has been referred to as "Clinton News Network". Many commentators there are Clinton officials or campaign staff. If Steele was drawing "evidence" from random individuals posting to CNN's websites, what are the odds those "random individuals" would be connected to the Clinton campaign and/or researchers like Nellie Ohr or other people with access to intel databases who needed to covertly and deniably communicate their findings?

Of course, such "sources" don't exactly meet criteria for admissibility in court, either.

Fake News Russian Collusion out, real Ukrainian collusion in

After nearly three years and millions of tax dollars, the Trump-Russia collusion probe is about to be resolved. Emerging in its place is newly unearthed evidence suggesting another foreign effort to influence the 2016 election  this time, in favor of the Democrats.

Ukraines top prosecutor divulged in an interview aired Wednesday on Hill.TV that he has opened an investigation into whether his countrys law enforcement apparatus intentionally leaked financial records during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign about then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in an effort to sway the election in favor of Hillary Clinton.[...]Ukraine Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenkos probe was prompted by a Ukrainian parliamentarian's release of a tape recording purporting to quote a top law enforcement official as saying his agency leaked the Manafort financial records to help Clinton's campaign.

The parliamentarian also secured a court ruling that the leak amounted to an illegal intrusion into the American election campaign, Lutsenko told me. Lutsenko said the tape recording is a serious enough allegation to warrant opening a probe, and one of his concerns is that the Ukrainian law enforcement agency involved had frequent contact with the Obama administrations U.S. Embassy in Kiev at the time.

To be fair, the Ukrainian collusion part is still alleged. But there's tape, a court ruling, an active criminal investigation, and contacts with the Obama administration via the US embassy in the Ukraine.

The Russian Collusion Propaganda machine

Key Democratic operatives and private investigators who tried to derail Donald Trumps campaign by claiming he was a tool of the Kremlin have rebooted their operation since his election with a multimillion-dollar stealth campaign to persuade major media outlets and lawmakers that the president should be impeached.

The effort has successfully placed a series of questionable stories alleging secret back channels and meetings between Trump associates and Russian spies, while influencing related investigations and reports from Congress.

The operations nerve center is a Washington-based nonprofit called The Democracy Integrity Project, or TDIP. Among other activities, it pumps out daily research briefings to prominent Washington journalists, as well as congressional staffers, to keep the Russia collusion narrative alive.

Combine this story with Devin Nunes announcing he is suing twitter about shadowbanning and coordinated harassment campaigns, and you start to see what looks like a planned counteroffensive.

Mueller report: No collusion

In his investigation, Mueller employed 60 people for 2 years, 3000 subpoenas (!!!!), 500 search warrants, 230 requests for communication records, 50 orders authorizing "pen registers" (wiretaps that only report who you talked to but not the content), 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed 500 people. It's not clear how many of those were focused on the process crimes and unrelated criminal matters Mueller was trying to use as leverage, but it's clear he left no stone unturned and found nothing regarding the central matter of his investigation.

The President and his 2016 campaign are completely vindicated.

The individuals whose prior criminal acts made them vulnerable are not, except to the extent their association with the President brought them under unprecedented and excessive scrutiny.

Mueller chose to examine the facts concerning allegations of obstruction of justice while leaving it to the Attorney General to decide whether those facts amounted to obstruction. The Attorney General determined they did not.

The letter suggests more information will be released when possible (ie, when the material that cannot be released, such as grand jury information, is identified and removed).

It's likely Congress will attempt to seize on the obstruction issue as grounds for impeachment, but this is very plainly a step too far that can only be taken due to political desperation at this point.

And now the tables turn. Prosecute those who abused the national security and law enforcement agencies of our government while seeking to dictate the results of an election. Drain the swamp. Lock Hillary up, and her little cronies too.

UPDATE: Wait a sec. Mueller asked for help from 13 foreign governments? That seems like a dangerous intrusion on the President's power to conduct foreign policy, especially in an investigation effectively (if not formally) targeting the President.

Page: Russia investigation was insurance policy

One of the biggest revelations was that Page, who was having an affair with then-FBI agent Peter Strzok, said that the infamous "insurance policy" text message was referring to the Russia investigation.

"During her interview with the Judiciary Committee in July 2018, Page was questioned at length about that text  and essentially confirmed this referred to the Russia investigation while explaining that officials were proceeding with caution, concerned about the implications of the case while not wanting to go at 'total breakneck speed' and risk burning sources as they presumed Trump wouldn't be elected anyway," Fox News reported. "Further, she confirmed investigators only had a 'paucity' of evidence at the start."

Basically, in her testimony, Lisa Page admitted that both investigations were heavily political, that the Clinton investigation was swept under the rug (she says by DOJ's rules), and that the Trump-Russia investigation was started with no evidence and never managed to actually find any.

Russian escort recants claim to have evidence of Trump collusion

Mind you, I think the claim to have recordings of Deripaska colluding about Trump is and has always been bunk. You think Deripaska wouldn't have noticed her recording things?

But that she overheard Deripaska talking about colluding with Trump... to the FBI, when they asked him about it, well, that wouldn't surprise me. That would be an easy conversation to misunderstand, especially hearing only one side, as you would overhearing a phone call.

Of course, it's equally possibly she was lying and has no relationship to Deripaska at all, or that she was telling the truth and was threatened into silence.

Nellie Ohr admits investigating travels of Trump family

Nellie Ohr, the wife of Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, told Congress in October that she investigated President Donald Trumps children on behalf of Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm behind the Steele dossier. Nellie Ohr, who worked as a contractor for Fusion GPS, looking into Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trumps business dealings and their travel.

This is confirmation of a theory long pushed by the Conservative Treehouse: Nellie Ohr, working for Fusion GPS, almost certainly used her access to the NSA databases to investigate Trump and his children. (Where else could she research their travel? She was a contractor and had access.)

This is also significantly -- hugely significant -- because it confirms that the investigation targeted the Trump family all along. She frames her research as being superficial and into the children's travel and Trump's real estate dealings, which are topics suitable for opposition research, but not for a federal contractor using intelligence databases.

It also confirms the timing of the investigation (as contractor access to the NSA databases was cut off before the election, on April 18th, probably by Mike Rogers, which forced the FBI to seek a warrant from the FISC).

It is shocking to me that this admission -- which took place in October, and has only recently been leaked to the press -- did not result in Ohr immediately being arrested for her crimes.

The only thing missing here, as I see it, is that Nellie is not quoted as using her access to NSA and other law enforcement/intelligence databases to do the research. In theory, as these are public figures, she could have used Google. But anyone could do that. You wouldn't need someone like Nellie, with her access, to do Google searches on the public net for press releases and news articles about semi-famous people traveling around.

Summarizing and Contrasting Spygate

Robert Muellers legal team may write a damning report on Trumps ethics, based mostly on flipping minor former business associates of Trumps and transient campaign officials by threatening them with long prison sentences...

In the subsequent 18 months, Robert Mueller assembled a highly partisan team of lawyers and investigators that included a number of Clinton donors; lawyers who had represented either the Clinton Foundation, a Clinton aide, or an Obama official; and rank anti-Trump partisans such as Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Their task was to investigate the charges of Russian collusion as planted by those in government and Christopher Steele and his abettors.

Such skullduggery poses the question of whether Muellers investigation has been simply derailed by partisanship. Or has it effectively served as a deliberate distraction from the felonious behavior of dozens of Obama-administration and Clinton-campaign officials  all determined to ensure, by any means necessary, that Trump would never be president?

If you can pin down a liberal over the holidays long enough to make them read one article about Spygate, this might be a good choice.

FBI releases dossier briefing document

It's short -- two pages -- and practically all of them are redacted. Notably, though, the unredacted portions do not faithfully describe who paid for the dossier. The description is technically accurate, but does not mention the Clintons, the Democrats, or political opposition research. Instead, the funding is described as coming from "private clients" only.

Remember, the FBI and DOJ knew where this was coming from. There is no way to spin this briefing document, being presented to the President, as anything less than deliberately deceptive. It was a weasel move, by a weasel of a man who does weasel things.

This release takes on a certain new significance given that Comey recently testified to Congress that he only knew the funding came from "private clients", not specifically who those clients were. It could even be argued that the release was timed to tell Comey what the documents said, so he could claim not to know anything more than what was in the documents.

Comey testifies, part 2

Detailed comments below the fold. My overall impression is that we, again, lost out by having this held in a public forum. Comey can hide behind that to avoid answering important questions. He can also hide behind the Mueller investigation. I'd like to see this all public, but getting there requires investigators to be able to ask about classified things so the answers can then be declassified.

Sullivan throws a wrench into the Flynn sentencing, but for the wrong reasons

Because Judge Sullivan has previously seen some political schemes and machinations from the FBI (notably the Ted Stevens case), some people were hopeful that he would see through the FBI bullshit. Instead he seems to have latched on to the failure to register as a foreign agent charges (which Flynn got out of by way of the plea bargain with Mueller) and threatened Flynn into cooperating more. Disappointing.

Gotta wonder if the Deep State got to Sullivan.

UPDATE: For clarity, the failure to register charges involved Turkey, not Russia.

Comey talks to the media following second testimony

Comey testified to Congress for the second time today. He talked to the media afterwards. We should get a transcript sometime soon.

He says he was asked about "which form people filled out". This is either a reference to the 302s about the Flynn interview, or the procedures necessary to initiate a sensitive political investigation (which he previously admitted to not knowing or following).

He admits that he "took a decision away from Sally Yates" to avoid the appearance of political bias, which is the same reasoning he used when announcing that he would not recommend prosecuting Clinton himself (because Lynch was compromised by the tarmac meeting and other, unspecified, information). He says he did this "to make it necessary for Trump to burn down the entire FBI to stop the investigation" and was shocked that Trump was willing to do just that. He seems to think he is acting in a completely non-partisan manner and all his actions, no matter how improper or obviously partisan, are above reproach. It's disgusting.

Asked if he takes any responsibility for the hit the reputation of the FBI has taken, he blames Trump for "lying". That's bullshit; Comey was at the head of the agency while it behaved in a nakedly partisan manner to influence the Presidential election in 2016. Blaming Trump for the actions in which Trump was a victim is absurd, and he wasn't in office for the Clinton investigation.

He blames others and says they should be ashamed for being silent. This is the man who said he couldn't remember or didn't know under oath over 200 times.

He's "proud" of the way the FBI interviewed Flynn, despite admitting previously he "took advantage" of the chaos in the incoming administration.

He won't comment on whether the memos he leaked were classified. Of course not. That would embarrass him.

BOMBSHELL: Comey likely knew about the Trump tower meeting in June 2016

Why is this important? The meeting happened June 9th, and the investigation didn't open until the end of July, and Comey says he can't answer because the question touches on Mueller's investigation. But if he didn't know about the meeting he could answer that. If he knew, and can't answer, it's because it was related to the Mueller investigation -- which didn't exist at the time.

So Comey knew about the meeting before the investigation opened in July.

How? Did he get the information from Steele, or Perkins-Coie through Baker, or surveillance on Trump?

Manafort's passports do not show trips to meet Assange

Paul Manaforts passports dont show he entered London in all the years claimed by Guardian newspaper when it said he met secretly with WikiLeaks Julian Assange.

The Guardian said he met with Mr. Assange in London in 2013, 2015 and 2016.

A review of Manaforts two passports shows he entered Heathrow Airport since 2008 on two occasions, in 2012 and on another time where the customs stamp year is blurred. It appears to be either 2010 or 2016.

So, maybe one stamp in 2016, but it might also be 2010. I imagine the date of that last stamp can probably be proven with other data. Even if Manafort was in London, it doesn't prove he met with Assange, but the lack of stamps relevant to all of the claimed meetings throws serious doubt on the accusations.

Nunes calls for more declassified emails

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) told Fox News Maria Bartiromo yesterday that he wishes to see a fourth bucket of emails declassified, saying it would reveal evidence that the Department of Justice and FBI withheld information from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

Nunes said the first of three buckets were Russia-related documents which President Trumpafter calling for their releasehad to backtrack on after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein intervened and suggested the Inspector General review them first.

The new fourth bucket that were asking to be declassified now is  for months we have been reviewing emails between FBI, and DOJ, and others that clearly show that they knew about information that should have been presented to the FISA court, he said. So it is real evidence that people within the FBI withheld evidence from the FISA court.

The more information we can get into the public domain about this the better.

Trump responds to Mueller's written questions

Since we don't know what was asked or answered, I can only hope (and trust) that the President's attorneys double and triple checked every answer to avoid any possible hint at a process crime.

How Mueller writes his report now that the Democrats are in power is going to depend on how honest he is. If he's a Democrat operative, he'll write something to justify impeachment even if it's flimsy. The Dems know it won't pass the Senate, they just want the vote for political reasons to encourage turnout. If he's just interested in protecting the FBI and DOJ as institutions, he'll write something bland and keep a few threads open, trusting that the Dem House won't press the issue.

A new tidbit about Alexander Downer, Australian 007

The Australian diplomat who spoke to George Papadopoulus in a wine bar about Russians and may or may not have spoken about emails turns out to be a former Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Australian counterpart to the CIA reports directly to that position.

Mueller begins writing his final report

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team has started writing its final report after a months-long investigation into possible ties between President Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, multiple sources told CNN on Thursday.

Funny how a supposedly non-political investigation had to wait until after the elections to begin writing their final report. I mean, I could understand waiting until after the elections to release it. But if you start writing immediately after the elections, it sort of suggests that you needed to know the outcome of those elections to determine what you would write.

Bongino interviews Papadopoulos

What follows is my own summary of key information from the interview, but I urge you to listen to the whole interview at a minimum.

George was working (unknowingly) for an CIA-FBI front group. His employers set up the meeting with Mifsud (the supposed Russian agent) in a facility in Rome used to train western intelligence agents. The person who set up the meeting is the FBI's chief legal counsel in the UK. The people introducing Mifsud's companion as "Putin's niece" (she's not) were Director-level positions at the center, meaning they are all in the scheme.

George speculates (based on two news sources contacting him to ask about it) that there was a FISA warrant on him. That would be an explosive bombshell revelation, because we have only heard about the FISA warrant on Carter Page so far.

George describes traveling to Israel and being arrested and interrogated about social media campaign influence in the US. "Arrested" is perhaps an understatement; he said he was afraid for his life. (These were the people who gave him $10K intended to entrap him on returning to the US; George also suspects the bills were marked).

George describes a number of people offering him money and introducing him to women ("honeytraps"). One of them offered him $30K/mo and an office in New York... if he worked simultaneously for the Trump administration. That guy set up a lot of behavioral red flags and was recording the conversation. Papadopoulos refused the offer.

One of the honeytraps is named "Azra Turk" (a Turkish national). George suspects she is a CIA or western intelligence asset rather than FBI, which would also expand the scandal.

George describes a number of times when he was probably recorded, at least one in a meeting with Halper, and refuses to cooperate and asks to be left alone.

George describes his meeting with Australian ambassador Downer. It also included Downer's "girlfriend" an Australian intelligence officer. It was not a chance meeting, it was orchestrated. And George thinks that conversation was being recorded, and says emails did not come up during that conversation at all. George says that is false. George also says neither of the participants were drunk (one drink each) and that it was not a friendly meeting.

George says there was someone inside the Trump campaign acting as a confidential source and probably feeding information out to the FBI. Congress knows who they are. Hopefully the rest of the world will find out soon as the truth of this whole operation comes out.

Mueller subpoenas Jerome Corsi

Apparently, it's because Jerome Corsi is connected to Roger Stone. Stone is an associate of Trump, apparently, and works with the National Enquirer. I assume this is Mueller following up on Cohen's guilty plea to "campaign finance" charges that involved shell corporations and payoffs to bimbo eruptions.

I use the term advisedly. Clinton was credibly alleged to have groped and even raped people, although his most famous affair with Lewinsky was consensual. Trump has been accused of having consensual sex and paying the women to keep quiet about it. When they don't, that's a bimbo eruption. Sorry, Stormy.

In any event, the odds that either Jerome Corsi or Roger Stone have anything to do with Russian collusion to influence the 2016 election -- which is Mueller's only area of authority -- seems very low. Mueller is likely looking for more "campaign finance" crimes he can use to coerce guilty pleas that purport to implicate Trump. And he wants those because he desperately needs leverage.

Trump may declassify requested FISA documents

I have a hunch that this declassification process is what prompted Mueller's public negotiation attempt. Mueller's job (his real job) is to protect Obama, the intelligence community, the law enforcement community, and the Clintons, probably in that order. (There's a non-zero chance Obama is actually just above the Clintons on Mueller's priority list; if that's the case Obama should be very worried). Mueller needs to protect them because they went way, way out on a limb to spy on Trump during the presidential campaign, and if the full extent of their interference is exposed, it could easily lead to outrage or even criminal charges.

Declassifying documents so the general public can see them renders the FBI attempt to protect those documents moot, and plants a massive egg on the face of everyone involved -- including the intelligence community actors who have so far received relatively little scrutiny, and possibly (if not in these documents, then in later batches) on the political actors. If Trump starts declassifying things, that opens a can of worms that probably can't be closed. All the schemes would be exposed and the information out in public.

That's good for Trump, assuming he's innocent of the Russian collusion charge. That's why Mueller has been desperately digging for something else he can use as leverage. He's nailed a few people for tax issues and rarely-used registration laws, flipped Michael Cohen for more tax issues and got him to plead to a probably-invalid campaign finance crime, but it hasn't given him any real leverage on Trump. And it's Trump he needs leverage on to avoid the declassification scenario.

Why didn't the FBI ask Papadopoulos to approach Mifsud?

In addition to playing up the irrelevant, the press passed on the noteworthy: Papadopoulos sentencing memo reveals new evidence that further indicates the FBIs goal in Crossfire Hurricane was to investigate Trumpnot Russias interference with the presidential election.

In the memo, Papadopouloss lawyers detailed the FBIs January 27, 2017, questioning of their client, explaining that for two hours, Papadopoulos answered questions about professor Joseph Mifsud, Carter Page, Sergei Millian, the Trump Dossier, and others on the campaign. According to Papadopoulos, [t]he agents asked George if he would be willing to actively cooperate and contact various people they had discussed. Papadopoulos said he would be willing to try.

Yet when Mifsudthe Maltese professor who in late April 2016 told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary in the form of thousands of emailsvisited the United States just two weeks later to speak at a State Department-sponsored conference, the FBI didnt even bother to have Papadopoulos reach out to his former colleague.

Of course, they didn't bother because Mifsud was working for western intelligence when he approached Papadopoulus. By that time they were in cover-up-and-shut-up mode.

The deep state will try to defend Ohr

National security attorney Mark Zaid once represented a client who was at risk of losing his security clearance "because he stole pens from an embassy when he was 14 years old," or so the agency he was at odds with claimed. The "ludicrous" example, as Zaid described it, was used to block his client from accessing sensitive information, thus precluding him from performing the duties of his job after he fell "out of favor" with his boss.

It's that sort of thing  the stealing of pens as an adolescent or the failure to report meetings with foreign officials as set forth by guidelines  that President Trump could rely on to strip Justice Department official Bruce Ohr of his security clearance.

Yes, he's seriously going to compare what Bruce Ohr did to stealing pens from am embassy at 14.

Articles of Impeachment introduced against... Rosenstein?

The only problem with the idea of impeaching Rosenstein is that the Senate will never vote to convict. That said, a vote to impeach in the House would give Trump political cover to remove Rosenstein without being credibly accused of obstruction of justice. ("I don't want anyone in my administration who has been impeached by the House" is an entirely justifiable reason for firing Rosenstein). Similar rules can be applied to lower level officials with a simple majority in the House; the Senate might need some fiddling but putting the rule in a reconciliation bill should let it through with a simple majority. And the principle would be a significant step towards accountability when the President is, unfortunately, politically hamstrung by a conspiracy against him among his own officials.

The Buck Stops at the Obama White House

Here's what Obama's Director of National Intelligence, the nation's former spy master, James Clapper, told CNN's Anderson Cooper:

"If it weren't for President Obama we might not have done the intelligence community assessment that we did that set up a whole sequence of event which are still unfolding today, including Special Counsel (Robert) Mueller's investigation. President Obama is responsible for that. It was he who tasked us to do that intelligence community assessment in the first place."

One person who was listening closely in the meeting and is thought to have an unbiased view of events was a man named Anatoli Samochornov, who was there as a translator for Veselnitskaya, who knew very little English.

Samochornov was in the room for the entire meeting and did not remember anyone bringing up Goldstone's original email promising dirt on Clinton. He did not remember Trump Jr., Manafort, or Kushner asking any of the Russians any questions. He did not remember anyone mentioning that any sort of information might be provided in the future. He did not remember anyone mentioning Hillary Clinton, or negative information on Hillary Clinton. He did not remember anyone discussing a future meeting. (Samochornov also testified about a lunch the Russian participants had before the Trump Tower meeting. He did not remember anyone mentioning providing negative information about Clinton, or anyone mentioning Clinton at all.)

Samochornov did remember one thing that Donald Trump Jr. said during the meeting. At the end, he testified, Trump Jr. said that "if or when my father becomes president, we will revisit this issue."

Investigators asked what Samochornov thought Trump Jr. meant by that. "Frankly, if you are asking for my reaction, it was a very polite way of saying, 'Thank you very much. It's time for you to go. The meeting's over.'"

We don't have to take just his word for it. Remember, Fusion GPS was taking money from Russians to lobby Trump about the Magnitsky Act even as they were taking money from Hillary to "investigate" Trump. They could kill two birds with one stone by setting up a meeting with Trump Jr under false pretenses of providing dirt on Hillary and using it to try to sell Trump Jr on the Magnitsky act changes they wanted.

Nunes did not comment after the meeting. CNN reported that he and Gowdy didn't get to see all of the documents they were wanting to view.

McConnell is one of the "gang of eight" Brennan briefed about the operation. Of course he wasn't surprised; he's heard it all before, at least assuming Brennan's individual briefings to each Gang of 8 member actually contained the same information. (I'm skeptical about that; why brief them individually then?)

So I'm not surprised that McConnell isn't surprised. McConnell is a swamp creature. The sooner he circles the drain, the better.

Despite the White House chief of staff showing up before the meeting to state the President's position that all possible information should be shared, the FBI and DOJ are still covering things up.

The special counsel as political tool

To media critics of President Donald Trump, suggestions that independent counsel Robert Mueller may meddle in this years midterm elections were beyond the pale. But a trip through the history pages reveals just how impactful a special counsel can be on voting.

In 1992, special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh got a grand jury to return a high-profile indictment in the Iran-Contra affair days before the election. Many outside observers believe the timing was no coincidence.

It may have cost George Bush the election, because he was making up a point a day (in the polls) Those indictments just ruined Bushs momentum, presidential history Craig Shirley said.

Of course this is what Mueller is going to do. There was never any doubt. Right before the election, he delivers his big indictments (or his report, if he can't actually get anything solid enough to indict), setting up a "blue wave" in the House followed immediately by impeachment hearings that last two more years and culminate in an impeachment vote immediately before the 2020 presidential election.

Derailing that won't be easy, but throwing Clinton and Obama and their minions in jail for abusing the national security infrastructure to steal a national election might just do it.

Rosenstein should recuse himself from Mueller investigation

We have here an allegation by the former Deputy Director of the FBI that Rosenstein participated in a cover-up of Trump's alleged obstruction of justice (consisting of the firing of Comey). In McCabe's view, Rosenstein's memo was written just to justify an illegal act.

And Rosenstein went along with it.

And McCabe has passed this memo along to Mueller -- who is, technically, Rosenstein's subordinate.

That puts Rosenstein in the same position that Sessions was in when he recused himself -- overseeing an investigation in which he himself might become a subject, and whose presence in the chain of command would be read as a "back off' signal to any subordinate digging into his role.

Brennan was after Trump as early as 2015

It is now coming to light that the FBI was setting up Trump ever since he became a likely presidential nominee. In late 2015, Brennan embraced a false tip from Estonia that Putin was seeking to support Trump financially, and brought Comey into an intra-agency group targeting Trump. On March 21, 2016, candidate Trump met with The Washington Post editorial board, which asked about his foreign policy credentials. To bolster his teams strength, perhaps inflationarily, he named lowly, clueless hangers-on George Papadopoulos and Carter Page as part of his team with Russian experience  literally true, but nonetheless a strenuous stretch. It was then that the entrapping forces of Comey, Clapper, and Brennan, partisans all, went to work.

Remember all the news stories about how Trump didn't have a foreign policy team and asking who his foreign policy advisers were? The questions from the media that prompted Trump to prepare a list of advisers hastily and get it out there?

I wonder how many of those news stories could be traced back to Hillary and her campaign?

James Comey colluded with DOJ, FBI, Mueller prior to testimony before Congress

I cant rely on anything I see in the media because there are no leaks coming out of Robert Muellers operation, so I dont know what he knows, Comey said. I really dont know what he has. What I do know is that he and his team are an all-star team of pros.

In response to your emails below we have consulted with executive management here, including the General Counsel, and recommend the following:

That your counsel convey any acceptance or declinations to invitations to testify directly to the Committees.

That your counsel consult with Special Counsel Mueller to determine the timing of any such testimony and,

The Office of General Counsel stands ready to discuss with you in consultation with the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel, institutional privileges or prerogatives that may be presented by any such testimony.

Comey was in charge of the FBI when the entire Steele dossier thing started. He was the one who presented to Trump info regarding the dossier even while knowing a significant portion of it was completely fabricated. He was the one in charge of that investigation that used a top-secret source, and as Kimberly Strassel reports, that that critical information was kept hidden from a major Congressional investigation.

I'll just point out here that when Comey presented the dossier to Trump, he mentioned the most salacious parts, and left out the parts about, you know, collusion with the Russians.

Spygate winning in the polls

A majority of 51 percent of voters now believe senior law enforcement officials are likely to have broken the law in an effort to prevent Trump from winning the presidency, according to a poll from Rasmussen Reports.

The media can choose what to report, but they can't choose what people think about it.

The discovery trap Mueller fell into

Against all expectations, in April, lawyers for one of the Russian corporate defendants, Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, entered their appearances in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They followed up by serving extensive discovery requests on Team Mueller seeking full disclosure of the governments case and investigation including sensitive national security and intelligence information.

This type of discovery is called graymail (as distinguished from blackmail) in which the government is faced with having to disclose closely guarded state secrets in order to proceed with the prosecution. The alternative is to drop the charges.

Given that the maximum penalty against Concord is an uncollectable $500,000 fine or equally uncollectable compensation to anyone damaged by the alleged conspiracy, the choice is all the more bitter for Team Mueller. Should they litigate the discovery requests? If they lose and are faced with having to disclose sensitive intelligence information about the case and their investigation, should they withdraw the indictment against Concord? And, if they drop the charges, are they prepared for the resulting public mockery and howls of derision?

Technically, Mueller doesn't have to care about public mockery and derision. But being taken seriously is the only defense he has against Trump simply choosing to fire him. It seems likely being forced to drop the charges against the Russians would effectively end Mueller's probe, being an admission that he doesn't have anything related to his mandate. If he failed to do so, Trump would easily be able to afford the political cost of firing him.

FBI agent who interviewed Michael Flynn found him honest and forthcoming

FBI Special Agent Joe Pientka, if subpoenaed, will provide testimony regarding the circumstances surrounding his interview with former National Security Advisor Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, sources with knowledge have been telling this reporter for more than a year.

So why won't Congress get off their collective ass and issue those subpoenas?

Andrew McCabe was writing memos too

His memo was about Comey's firing and what Rosenstein claimed Trump asked him to include in the memo. He gave the memo to Mueller. This appears to be part of a consistent pattern among the Obama administration holdovers and specifically the scheme team implicated in Spygate.

The FBI reportedly applied for a secret warrant in June 2016 to monitor Manafort, Page, Papadopoulos and Flynn. If true, it means the FBI targeted Flynn six months before his much-debated conversation with Russias ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.

The FBI applied four times to wiretap Page after he became a Trump campaign adviser starting in July 2016. Pages office is connected to Trump Tower and he reports having spent many hours in Trump Tower.

CNN reported that Manafort was wiretapped before and after the election including during a period when Manafort was known to talk to President Trump. Manafort reportedly has a residence in Trump Tower.

Most of the discussion of spying has been about Carter Page, because the FBI filed for a FISA warrant to spy on him based mostly on the Clinton-funded opposition research Steele dossier. But he's not the only direct individual victim. He's just the one we have the (obviously fraudulent and deficient) paperwork for. The others we know have been spied on via leaks, but not what legal justification was used.

Michael Flynn may have been intercepted talking to the Russian ambassador. It would be legal to wiretap the Russian ambassador pretty much constantly. But they waved BS Logan act violations around when he was the issue, which makes me think they got a warrant based on those allegations.

The rest we just don't know.

And don't forget the hundreds of "unmaskings" which are technically within the powers of some officials, but which were likely done in service of political motives.

McCabe sues DOJ over his firing

In what can only be seen as a dubious political stunt, Andrew McCabe, through his attorney Michael Bromwich, is suing the DOJ and Inspector General for documents relating to his firing. Apparently the 39-page IG report, documenting the reasoning, along with the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) isnt enough for McCabe.

I'm sure McCabe just hopes he can get a friendly lawyer to settle with.

Mueller tries to delay collusion trial and hide evidence

Mueller asked a federal judge in Washington for an order that would protect the handover of voluminous evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting LLC, one of three companies and 13 Russian nationals charged in a February indictment. They are accused of producing propaganda, posing as U.S. activists and posting political content on social media as so-called trolls to encourage strife in the U.S.

When you charge people in the US system, they have a right to see the evidence. Apparently Mueller doesn't want the evidence to come out. Oops.

House resolution to compel Rosenstein to release SpyGate documents

Reps. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced their intention Tuesday night to submit a resolution for a House vote compelling Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to produce requested documents  ones relating to special counsel Robert Muellers probe into allegations of collusion between President Donald Trumps campaign and Russian interests.

Gowdy and Ryan have previously expressed support for the FBI's position here, but Ryan is part of the Gang of 8 who would see them anyway (and who was probably briefed on at least some of the investigation earlier than the rest of Congress, so is somewhat tainted by it). Gowdy is probably just a blowhard who is easily talked into supporting law enforcement.

But the article says Jordan and Meadows spoke with Ryan and Gowdy before this announcement, so I assume they are behind it.

If so, let's hold the vote ASAP and force the FBI to start submitting to oversight. They have slow-walked long enough.

The DAG [Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein] criticized the Committee for sending our requests in writing and was further critical of the Committees request to have DOJ/FBI do the same when responding, the committee's then-senior counsel for counterterrorism Kash Patel wrote to the House Office of General Counsel. Going so far as to say that if the Committee likes being litigators, then we [DOJ] too [are] litigators, and we will subpoena your records and your emails, referring to HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] and Congress overall.

A second House committee staffer at the meeting backed up Patels account, writing: Let me just add that watching the Deputy Attorney General launch a sustained personal attack against a congressional staffer in retaliation for vigorous oversight was astonishing and disheartening. ... Also, having the nations #1 (for these matters) law enforcement officer threaten to 'subpoena your calls and emails' was downright chilling.

The committee staffer noted that Rosensteins comment could be interpreted as meaning the department would vigorously defend a contempt action" -- which might be expected. But the staffer continued, "I also read it as a not-so-veiled threat to unleash the full prosecutorial power of the state against us.

Note to Congress: start playing hardball. Appealing to Trump won't do much; he cant really interfere much while Mueller is active. It's up to Congress and oversight to get the information out there to help Huber.

Note to the DOJ: When you are denying that your official threatened Congressmen conducting legitimate oversight, it is not wise to repeat the threat:

The Deputy Attorney General was making the pointafter being threatened with contempt  that as an American citizen charged with the offense of contempt of Congress, he would have the right to defend himself, including requesting production of relevant emails and text messages and calling them as witnesses to demonstrate that their allegations are false, the official said. That is why he put them on notice to retain relevant emails and text messages, and he hopes they did so. (We have no process to obtain such records without congressional approval.)

Further, the official said that when Rosenstein returns to the United States from a work trip, he will request that the House General counsel conduct an internal investigation of these Congressional staffers conduct.

As far as I am concerned, this is clear and unambiguous grounds for Trump to fire Rosenstein, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is exactly why it leaked.

The truth that scares them

We have seen the result of all of this boomerang on the other side, on the Clinton campaign, which was more directly connected to the Russians than weve seen any evidence of with the Trump campaign," Pavlich said Monday.

The remarks caused former Clinton communications director Adrienne Elrod, who was also a guest during the segment, to burst out laughing.

They gave them money, Pavlich exclaimed.

I dont even know where to start here, Elrod said. The Clinton campaign did not have any collusion with Russia, lets just put that forward.

They paid someone working with Russians money for opposition research on Donald Trump, Pavlich cut in.

Not said: the "someone working with Russians" is Christopher Steele, and he admitted paying Russians for the information compiled in the dossier. So, yes, Hillary (through several layers of cutouts) paid Russians to (probably) lie about Trump to produce opposition research. Probably the Hillary campaign, through Steele and Fusion GPS, were paying the Russians to cooperate in setting up the Trump campaign -- specifically the meeting with Veselnitskya.

The fact that Mueller, whose theoretical remit includes Russian interference in the US election, is not investigating this publicly known Russian collusion with the Hillary campaign is enough by itself to discredit his investigation.

FBI agents afraid to testify?

Even as a new Rasmussen poll shows a majority of voters believe senior law enforcement officials broke the law to stop Donald Trump from beating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, rank-and-file FBI agents who want to testify against their superiors to Congress feel they cant due to an ineffective whistleblower protection law.

These agents believe the sluggishness of the law exposes them to an inordinate risk of reprisal, so they have remained in hiding and afraid to speak the truth...

He continued, You still have a ton of bad people in place. Unless that changes, and I havent seen any degree of seriousness on the part of ranking members nor staffers, Im not meeting with anyone nor willing to be subpoenaed. Im not coming forward until they get their act together. Right now, itd be sacrificing a career for cheap political points.

TheDC has learned that the bureau has already warned agents that the agency will come back viciously against all those behind destroying their narrative, and will go after their families and friends, too.

The Democrats are hoping they can keep a lid on this until November, then win the House and shut down the investigations. Agents are probably right to fear massive retaliation, both political and personal.

Mueller and Rosenstein -- an unwritten agreement

Special counsel Robert Mueller's recent admission that the May 17, 2017, Justice Department order defining the scope of his investigation was just for show, and that the real extent of his probe is a secret, is reverberating on Capitol Hill.

In court before Ellis, Mueller lawyer Michael Dreeben revealed that the May 17 appointment order is not a "factual statement" of Mueller's assignment. "The regulations nowhere say that a specific factual statement needs to be provided publicly," Dreeben added. "The specific factual statement was conveyed to the special counsel upon his appointment in ongoing discussions [between Rosenstein and Mueller] that defined the parameters of the investigation."

Dreeben explained that those discussions between Rosenstein and Mueller, incorporated in the Aug. 2 memo, established that Mueller had the authority to investigate Paul Manafort's financial dealings that Manafort contends are beyond the scope of Mueller's investigation into allegations of Trump-Russia collusion in the 2016 election.

What Mueller appears to be claiming is that he received his full mandate as special counsel from Rosenstein exclusively in verbal communications, meaning that only Rosenstein and Mueller together could agree on what was within or without the scope of the investigation.

I do not see how such a claim could possibly be valid or stand up to legal challenge.

Mueller is essentially claiming that, due to the lack of a written mandate, his authority derives from Rosenstein the man rather than the lawfully appointed (Acting) Attorney General. His unwritten mandate is fluid, and can change to meet the needs of the moment he finds himself in.

This is not consistent with the rule of law.

But of course, Rosenstein couldn't risk giving Mueller a well-defined mandate, because Mueller was going on a fishing expedition; he didn't know what he would find, but to be politically useful, he had to pursue whatever he found.

Review of Cohen's seized files not going well for prosecution

Based on the wording of the recommendation, it appears that the Special Master upheld the challenges in all but three cases. So Cohen and/or Trumps claims of privilege were upheld in 162 of 165 challenges.

These recommendations now go to the Judge.

There is a lot we dont know about the challenges and recommendations. For example, of the 12,543 pages in the eight boxes, we dont know how many of those pages were consumed by the 14 privileged documents; a document obviously could be a page, or hundreds of pages. As to the two phones and iPad, how many of the 291,770 items were system and other non-substantive files, and how many were substantive files; so we dont know what percentage of the substantive items were privileged.

162 privileged and 10 Highly Personal files is very substantial, particularly keeping in mind this is just the first batch of documents reviewed from a much larger group of electronic records.

That means the federal government, but for Cohens lawsuit, would have been able to review and potentially use a total of 172 documents that the federal government never should have seen.

Remember, if it's privileged, the government should never have been able to see it at all. A warrant doesn't get around attorney-client privilege, the bar is much higher than that. And if it's not privileged, that doesn't mean it is in any way criminal. It just means the government got a warrant and can legally look at it and use the material.

FBI to share more details of informant with Congress?

"The Department and FBI are prepared to brief members on certain questions specifically raised by the Speaker and other members," the DOJ official said. "The Department will also provide the documents that were available for review but not inspected by the members at the previous briefing along with some additional material."

I'll believe it when the members of Congress release the information publicly.

Ryan said Wednesday morning that he's seen "no evidence" to back up Trump's claim and endorsed the "initial assessment" of another senior GOP lawmaker  Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.)  who said the FBI appropriately used an informant to follow leads about suspect contact between Trump campaign associates and Russia.

If you want to see the evidence, Ryan, you have to actually look at it.

The source has been identified as a professor living in London who had been providing the FBI with information on a variety of cases for many years and did not work on the campaign.

President Trump has interpreted the existence of the source as the FBI planting a spy in his campaign, according to his many recent tweets on the subject.

So here's the catch: Halper didn't work on the Trump campaign. He only met with at least three members of the campaign, pumped them for information, and applied for a job with the campaign that he did not get.

So Halper -- who probably works for the CIA, not the FBI -- was certainly engaged in intelligence gathering from the Trump campaign. He was certainly spying on the campaign. If he was not "an informant within the campaign", it wasn't for lack of trying.

McCabe requests criminal immunity in return for testimony

Wait, what? Weve obviously come a full 180° from the place where Democrats were proclaiming McCabes innocence; and weve entered the phase where McCabe is requesting criminal immunity in exchange for testimony about what he knows of the corrupt FBI operations in 2016 and 2017.

Should he get it? I will answer in six words. "The White House is running this." Except that McCabe has already been fired for lying to the FBI, so whether his testimony can be trusted is open to question.

I'd like to know what McCabe knows and who he can implicate, but this should be a plea bargain, not an immunity deal.

Papadopoulos was colluding with ... Israel?

George Papadopoulos wife, Simona Mangiante, said her husband was not involved in collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government and that he pleaded guilty in the special counsels investigation to avoid facing charges that he was an agent of the Israeli government.

Even assuming he actually was colluding with Israel -- which I don't actually assume, other than hypothetically -- this is a long ways away from colluding with Russia. And Mueller's brief only covers colluding with Russia.

At some point, you have to stop Mueller from charging people with made-up crimes unrelated to his limited special counsel mandate just to get leverage.

And before saying Trump should just start pardoning people, there's an argument that's what Mueller wants. While there's an active investigation Mueller can claim was being "obstructed", Trump would be wise to avoid any directly connected pardons. Not because use of the pardon power could be criminal obstruction of justice, but because Mueller would certainly describe it that way to Congress in an impeachment report.

I don't know if Papadopoulos was colluding with Israel, or Russia, or anyone at all. I do know that Dan Bongino's show from June 5th, 2018, floated the interesting idea that Papadopoulos was arrested in a hurry -- without even getting a warrant ahead of time -- on the same day the IG notified Mueller's team of the text messages from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, and also that Papadopoulos mentioned the "Maltese Professor" Mifsud before being very vigorously told to shut up. Bongino speculates that Mifsud was the push component, trying to put information about Hillary's emails from Russians into the Trump campaign, so that Halper and others could try to pull the information out and use it against Trump.

If that read is accurate, Papadopoulos was arrested to shut him up so that the information about Mifsud and the entrapment side of the operation would stay quiet.

I don't think it's going to stay quiet. I think it's out there now, and the effort to shut Papadopoulos up was too little too late.

Comey, McCabe, Rybicki, others discussed CNN story about dossier

Hours before Comey briefed Trump, FBI chief of staff James Rybicki e-mailed staff that Comey is coming into HQ briefly now for an update from the sensitive matter team. Just as the same officials dubbed the Clinton e-mail investigation the mid-year exam and the anti-Trump counterintelligence investigation Crossfire Hurricane, they also used various phrases using sensitive to refer obliquely to the dossier.

Two days after the briefing, on January 8, 2017, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who earlier this year was fired and then referred for criminal prosecution by the DOJ inspector general for repeatedly lying about media leaks, wrote an e-mail to top FBI officials with the subject, Flood is coming.

CNN is close to going forward with the sensitive story, McCabe wrote to Comey, Rybicki, and two others. The trigger for them is they know the material was discussed in the brief and presented in an attachment. He did not detail how he came to know what CNNs trigger was for publishing the dossier briefing story.

McCabe was likely the leaker, or possibly others, but this ties Comey pretty closely to knowledge of the leaking.

When leaks are propaganda...

John Solomon, of The Hill, has two pieces of supposedly breaking news about Spygate. The only thing actually new in his breaking news is the justifications and excuses his sources are offering to try to spin the story.

The first is that the FBI began spying on the Trump campaign before the investigation had an official predicate:

[T]he FBI began spying on members of the Trump campaign to gather the intelligence that ultimately justified the collusion investigation, weeks or even months before the FBI had a formal predicate.

"That's very important. The rules say you can't use sources until you have a predicated investigation. The predication is July 31, 2016," Solomon told Fox host Sean Hannity. The investigative reporter said he had sources and documents backing up his claim that he would be making public in his report in The Hill on Friday.

He stressed that informants were making contacts with the Trump officials and providing information to the FBI "much, much earlier than July 31."

That's not so much a scoop as an admission. We've known that the investigation, including the actions by the spy Halper, took place earlier than July, and that the investigation supposedly started in July. There have been efforts to try to push the date backwards, but those have now failed; Solomon's sources appear to be admitting the approaches by Halper started before the official investigation was opened, and that that was a violation of the the rules.

But it's also there to conceal the big admission: the Obama White House was involved.

The second part of his bombshell report, Solomon explained, deals with internal FBI communications between former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, his mistress Lisa Page, and others discussing how the Obama White House was trying to take over the investigation.

"The words 'the White House is running this' are clear in the text message," Solomon told Hannity, adding that "the FBI agents who opened this case feared that Barack Obama was weak on national security and wouldn't do what they needed for Russia."

He said, "The political elements of the administration were trying to intrude on the FBI investigation."

Those words (bolded above) were redacted in the original release, if I remember correctly. And the spin is where Solomon says the White House was trying to take over the investigation. That's not what the message says. The White House is running this. Not trying to, and being rebuffed by loyal nonpartisan FBI agents. Is Running.

In other words, we have documentary evidence (and likely testimony from Page and Strzok as cooperating witnesses, at a minimum) that the political spying on Trump was run from the White House, and Rice's email to herself demonstrates that it was run right from the top -- Obama himself. Mind you, Rice was trying to cover for him by saying Obama told them to do it all "by the book". But the evidence is that the FBI, CIA, NSA, and others did not do it "by the book". The evidence makes Rice's email a transparently self-serving cover story. It also exposes as a lie Ben Rhodes' claim in his book that Obama did not know about the investigation until he left office. Oops; in their hurry to cover their own ass they forget to coordinate their stories.

Unless Obama left a paper trail of secret pardons on his way out the door, people will be going to jail for this.

Why hasn't Mueller indicted the hackers?

In the year since the start of special counsel Robert Muellers investigation, one thing has been notably absent: a public indictment of any Russians for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

But Mueller can't admit that (if he even knows) because it would destroy the Russian collusion narrative. The DNC email "hack" is the black hole that the whole scandal revolves around without ever shedding any light.

Rosenstein calls Congressional oversight of his agency 'extortion'

Following months and months of stonewalling and slow-walking the production of constitutionally-mandated oversight documents, the House Freedom Caucus is drafting articles of impeachment for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein's response was to claim this was "extortion" rather that a more accurate description of a "job performance review." Do you get the feeling that these clowns in the DOJ are waiting until the blue wave takes control of the House and they no longer have to comply with oversight requests? Yes, me too.

"But I can tell you there are people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time and I think they should understand by now: The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted," Rosenstein said. "Were going to do what is required by the rule of law and any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job."

Anatomy of a political spying operation

The FBI is asked--way back as early as 2015, but who knows? -- to be helpful to the Dems and they agree. What they do is they hire non-government consultants with close Dem ties to do "analytical work" for them, which happens to include total access to NSA data. Advantages? For the Dems, obviously, access to EVERYTHING digital. A gold mine for modern campaign research. For the FBI there's also an advantage. They get to play dumb -- gosh, we didn't know they were looking at all that stuff! They also don't have to falsify anything, like making [stuff] up to "justify" opening a FI [full investigation] on an American citizen and then lying to the FISC to get a FISA on the USPER [US person] and having to continually renew the FISA and lie all over again to the FISC each renewal. And the beauty of it all is, who's ever going to find out? And even if they do, how do you prove criminal intent?

o everything's humming along until a pain in the a** named Mike Rogers at NSA does an audit in 4/2016, just as the real campaign season is about to start. And Rogers learns that 85% of the searches the FBI has done between 12/2015 and 4/2016 have been totally out of bounds. And he clamps down -- no more non-government contractors, tight auditing on searches of NSA data. Oh sh*t! What to do, just give up? Well, not necessarily, but there's a lot more work involved and a lot more fudging the facts.

That's where the sudden need for a FISA warrant came from. Most likely, if the Obama administration (following Mike Roger's audit) had simply dropped the issue, punished the contractors, and let the election happen normally, it would have all been swept under the carpet. Instead, they doubled down, got their FISA warrant under false pretenses, and tried to use it to cover up their past activities and make sure Trump lost.

Two months before Trump was elected president, Deripaska was in New York as part of Russias United Nations delegation when three FBI agents awakened him in his home; at least one agent had worked with Deripaska on the aborted effort to rescue Levinson. During an hour-long visit, the agents posited a theory that Trumps campaign was secretly colluding with Russia to hijack the U.S. election.

Deripaska laughed but realized, despite the joviality, that they were serious, the lawyer said. So he told them in his informed opinion the idea they were proposing was false. You are trying to create something out of nothing, he told them. The agents left though the FBI sought more information in 2017 from the Russian, sources tell me. Waldman declined to say if Deripaska has been in contact with the FBI since Sept, 2016.

So why care about some banished Russian oligarchs account now?

Two reasons.

First, as the FBI prepared to get authority to surveil figures on Trumps campaign team, did it disclose to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that one of its past Russian sources waived them off the notion of Trump-Russia collusion?

I'm betting they didn't disclose that to the court, meaning a lie by omission. Even if a Russian denial (admittedly a Russian they apparently trust enough to work with to the tune of $25 million, which presents its own ethical and legal issues for Mueller) would not sink such an application, it is a factor that should be weighed by the court, especially with so much weight being placed on Steele's single-source credibility.

Mueller is now vulnerable to a conflict of interest charge in his role as special counsel because of his involvement with Deripaska.

Mueller: Incompetent at Large

Mueller was likely involved in the Whitey Bulger case where 4 innocent men were jailed for murder

Mueller was appointed as FBI director shortly before 9-11 and was absent from his post for 33 days during that time

The FBI missed warnings during that same period that might have led them to catch the hijackers before they struck

Completely botched the anthrax cases, costing a $6 million settlement and a suicide

Boston Marathon bombings also happened on his watch, and the FBI failed to act on multiple tips

While special counsel investigating alleged Russian collusion, failed to ask Wikileaks who provided the emails they leaked, while alleging those emails were leaked by the Russians in collusion with Trump

Raided Trump's personal lawyer Cohen, but the judge (with Clinton-Soros connections) would not allow the prosecutors to review the material themselves. Despite this, the material has been leaking into the media at a breakneck pace, suggesting they did in fact review it

Judge TS Ellis is demanding Mueller document his scope of authority to bring charges against Manafort

Indicted supposed Russian companies that he expected to never appear in court, until they did, and started demanding to see his evidence against them

Formed an alliance with New York AG Schneiderman, who has since resigned over allegations he abused multiple women in what he claims was "role-playing"

Granted immunity to a person who has pled guilty to child pornography charges

Glenn Greenwald names alleged CIA/FBI informant

If he's right, it's not the first time Halper engaged in a little election meddling on both sides. And there are some very large payments from government accounts to him. It looks very much like the intelligence community is for hire and willingly takes money to help decide elections. That's a bigger scandal than even I expected.

Yes, elections. He apparently has close ties to the Bush family, which has surprisingly amiable relations with the Clintons. There are indications he meddled in the Reagan-Carter race, in the other direction, perhaps explained by his connection to the Bushes (George Bush Sr was Reagan's VP candidate). And if he'll do it twice, why wouldn't he or others do it much more often than that?

The claims from the intelligence community that revealing his name would jeopardize his life seems absurd and self-serving. Unless, you know, they think someone would object to him fixing elections for the intelligence community rather violently.

Did Mueller collude with the Russians?

A report released on Monday raises new and serious legal issues for special counsel Robert Mueller and provides evidence of a possible conflict of interest in his role overseeing the Russia investigation.

Funny how all these upstanding straight shooters from the left always turn out to have skeletons in their closets when you bother to open them. In this case, a Russian billionaire in 2009 (under Obama, when Mueller was running the FBI) spent about $25 million trying to rescue an FBI agent captured in Iran. The operation ended when then Secretary of State Clinton refusing to make a statement that would allegedly have shifted the blame away from Iran.

Funny how leaving Americans to die is better for Clinton then a little diplomatic lying. Of course, the Russian billionaire involved has since been caught up in legal issues over ties to Paul Manafort, whom Mueller has charged, and the aid he gave to the FBI in that case may have been illegal as well.

Russian company demands dismissal of Mueller's charges

One of the Russian companies special counsel Robert Mueller accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election is asking a federal judge to determine if he is engaging in a sham criminal case.

Foreign interference in the presidential election is a make-believe crime, Concord Management and Consulting said in a court filing Monday. The company argues the case is an example of Mueller attempting to justify his own existence by indicting a Russian  any Russian.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has rejected the history and integrity of the DOJ and instead licensed a Special Counsel who for all practical political purposes cannot be fired, to indict a case that has absolutely nothing to do with any links or coordination between any candidate and the Russian Government, Concord wrote in the court filing.

I don't claim to know if any of these companies actually did what Mueller is accusing them of or not. But Mueller should not be allowed to get away with sham indictments designed to smear a president. He should have to prove his charges.

Mueller indicted a company that didn't exist

This week, one of the Russian companies accused by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of funding a conspiracy to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was revealed in court to not have existed during the time period alleged by Mueller's team of prosecutors, according to a lawyer representing the defendant.

When you actually look into Mueller's history, it's clear the guy is far from the hyper-competent apolitical cop he was sold to the public as being.